It’s that time of the year when many of Mumbai’s college students gear up to kick-start the preliminary activities around their annual festivalWith talks about St Xavier’s College’s Malhar, and IIT Bombay’s Mood Indigo (Mood-I) already doing the rounds, the latest festival to create much buzz is Wilson College’s Polaris. The festival will take place fromJuly 19-21and the students are leaving no stone unturned to give the event all the limelight they can.

Rohan Debarrama, a student representative for the fest, says, “We have already started spreading the word through our website and Facebook page. Besides that we have a couple of surprise activities planned around our mascot Polly, the purple cow, who will soon be visiting Marine Drive, Girgaon Chowpatty, Juhu Beach, the Gateway Of India, Colaba Causeway and Candies (Bandra).” The theme for Polaris 2013 is Colour Me Quirky — an amalgamation of off-beat events and activities, through which, the students plan on “encouraging the little quirkiness in everyone”.

On the other hand, students of IIT Bombay, are already busy creating anticipation about the very popular Mood-I which will take place towards the end of the year. This week, the winners of cultural activities from last year’s festival will be seen performing at the NCPA, Nariman Point. Students who won Third Bell – the one act play competition, Aagad – the street play event, Nrityangan – the classical dance event and the short film making contest will all be showcasing their talents. Explaining the campaign further, Abhirath Sharma, the media head of Mood-I says, “It goes a long way in helping the winners live their passions. It is one of the things that sets Mood-I apart from other college festivals.” Ask him about how the students manage to strategise their promotional campaigns all through the year and he says, “It is important to stay in the news and we plan all our events in such a way that enough buzz is created about the main event. We form our committee in April itself and work through the summer vacations to chalk the plan out.”